


so you were never a saint

by Meskeet



Series: h/c bingo fills 2017 [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TLJ, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meskeet/pseuds/Meskeet
Summary: Really, Rey thinks, somebody ought to have mentioned that force ghosts were a thing. In which Luke sort-of haunts Rey and reconsiders a lesson or two.“You know, when I asked questions, Yoda liked to hit me with a cane."





	so you were never a saint

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of emotions, okay? They ended up in the form of force-ghost Luke still trolling Rey and teaching her a little something at the same time. Yoda would be proud.

They’re evacuating slaves from a moon on the Outer Rim, piling them into one of the transport ships one of their former allies had given them in an attempt to make the Resistance go away – when Rey pauses, blaster fire barely missing her shoulder. “Luke?”

Poe almost blows by her, grabs her wrist and tugs her along several steps before Rey has the chance to stop him. “What – c’mon, we gotta get out of here before reinforcements show up.”

Rey stumbles behind him, fires her blaster back at the guards – and tries not to look at Luke, standing in the middle of the battlefield with his hands tucked neatly into his sleeves.

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Rey hisses when she’s as close to alone as she can get in the transport shuttle. She’s using the Force to stack crates of supplies, trying to make room for a few more beds in the shuttle-bay. Although they had been able to free more slaves than they thought, it made for tight quarters.

“Maybe you did it,” Luke suggests and there’s that damnably smug tone from him again. He sits on top of the crate she had been about to lift, cross-legged and serene. He isn’t all there – Rey can see a ray of overhead light dimly illuminate the box below him, a faint glow collected along his skin.

“You’re the Jedi, you tell me,” her voice climbs, a little, and she cuts herself off.

“Maybe that should have been your first lesson,” Luke says. He meets her eyes and she feels compelled to hold his gaze. For a moment, she can almost see the beginnings of an expression – but then it’s only the metal of the wall behind him that she makes out. “ _You_ ’ _re_ the Jedi now.”

Rey looks for something to throw at him, half-tempted to just pick up another crate and set it crashing down on whatever the hell he is, but when she looks back, he’s gone.

“Not like you taught me anything to start off with,” she mutters. The Resistance is gone, Skywalker is gone – both the one they’d been looking for and then whatever this one was – and the most Rey has managed to do is turn Ben further to the dark side. “Some Jedi I’ve turned out to be.”

* * *

She’s not sure if it’s a benefit or not that her Force bond with Kylo Ren seems to be happening less often these days. Ever since the last meeting – well, they weren’t exactly seeking each other out now, were they?

Still, Rey’s gotten faster at recognizing the signs and when she feels that slight brush against her senses, turns. "Hello, Ben.”

Kylo Ren slouches against – a desk? Yes, that’s it – his background is coming through more clearly now, the longer she looks. She doesn’t miss the way his shoulders tighten at the name.

“You look tired,” is all he says. “You should have taken my offer.”

Rey reaches out, feels how the Force energy rolls off of him and pulls away. Not an annoyingly chatty hallucination, then. “You’ve said that before.”

He’s not wrong – about being tired, that is. Rey slumps against her corner of wall, knows that as long as she stays quiet she probably won’t attract any looks if anyone is even awake. For a brief moment, she thinks about hitting him, over and over again until her knuckles are split and bleeding and he hits her back.

“I can have regrets, too,” Kylo Ren says, then pauses, as though he expects some sort of response from her.

Rey laughs, once. She doesn’t know why she does it – she leans forward until she can feel the Force crackling with energy. Ben blinks, shifts back just a little bit, as though she’s a live wire he isn’t sure he wants to touch. “I know you do,” is all she says, crowding back into his space. For all that there’s a threat there, Rey’s words are soft. She can feel the phantom weight of his lightsaber pressing into her hip from where it hangs from his belt. Rey taps it once, meaningfully. Watches his eyes follow her hand and widen. He shifts a little, hand going to his chest. “So do I.”

She pulls backs away, sinks against the wall. Rey rolls onto her side, a slow itch crawling its way down her neck.

Kylo’s presence doesn’t disappear immediately, but honestly, he was right. She _was_ tired. Rey closes her eyes and doesn’t say another word.

* * *

“Not exactly light reading, is it?” Luke says. He looks younger than she had ever seen him – all sandy hair and slouching, hands shoved in pockets rather than the folds of Jedi robes. No beard either, and when Rey tells him he looks better that way, Luke laughs at her. “I don’t know why you wanted those dusty old books anyway.”

“They’re not dusty anymore,” Rey says, and sneezes as she closes the book and sends a brief burst of dust into the air.

“Sure they’re not,” Luke holds out a hand and Rey doesn’t manage to catch the book before it flies out of her hand. Luke tosses it once, twice into the air and flips it open. “Ah, yes. This is one of my favorites. Lots of _sacrifice,_ _Force demands_. You’ll like learning about the Living Force more than you’ll care about midiclorians.”

He throws it back at her – not with his hand, but with the Force, which means Rey has to duck before it hits her in the face. She reaches behind her with a raised eyebrow, fingers brushing on the cover and –

It moves away.

Rey scowls at Luke, who settles down in front of her, eyes closed. Rey realizes that she’s in the same posture and she unfurls one leg to stretch in front of her. He smirks, raising an eyebrow.

“Stop it.”

“If you want it, get it,” is all he says. Rey reaches for it, but he makes a vague noise. “More than lifting rocks, right? Or breaking my family heirlooms, for that matter.”

Rey mutters something uncomplimentary about Jedi recluses and closes her eyes. “You’re the one who threw it off a cliff,” she says, but she’s already reaching for that deep abyss within her. She had felt… something, when Luke moved the book, and it’s easier to reach for it with her eyes closed. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Luke doesn’t reply at that and Rey digs further. It’s becoming easier with time to feel for the Force – she isn’t quite blindly groping around in the dark anymore, although most days, it’s sluggish to respond to her efforts. Hesitantly, she feels energy sparking, moving around her in currents and then –

There it is.

Rey opens her eyes to see the book open in her lap, open about three-quarters of the way through. There’s a bookmark in there, one she doesn’t recognize as her own.

When she looks up, Luke’s gone.

* * *

“I – uh,” Finn begins, crouching down on his heels beside her seat in the cockpit. Behind him, BB-8 cautiously peeks around his legs. Poe’s left the seat beside her for the first time in eight hours, having disappeared shortly after mentioning the possibility of food, which means it’s just the three of them. Rey nods to his empty chair. Finn settles in it, then says, “Um. Luke.”

Rey tilts her head, checking the navigation systems again. “Poe told you?”

“BB-8, actually,” the droid squeaks, wheeling around to the other side of Finn’s chair. “Poe said the Force stuff was your business and he didn’t want to get involved, but-”

BB-8 trills, rolling sideways so just an eye peeks out at Rey. She musters up a smile for the little droid.

“You’re not used to the Force, are you?” she says quietly. BB-8 wobbles back and forth, just a little, and emerges a little more from behind Finn. “It was Luke.”

She doesn’t know _how_ she knows it was him. He barely looked like he did on the island – she’d never even seen him smile, although the rest was all him. “He threw a book at me, you know.”

BB-8’s harsh series of beeps are clear enough for even Finn’s rudimentary binary. Rey raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been spending too much time with R2,” she says, then looks up at Finn. “I think – I think regret is too strong a word for him, but I think we both wish things had gone differently.”

“You’re learning how to use the Force from a dead guy?” is all Finn says. Apparently he’s still stuck on that.

Rey falters. She’s almost certain she has a good explanation for it – some sort of perfect way to describe what her and Luke are doing. What comes out is, “I wouldn’t call it learning. Right now, it’s mostly all ducking.”

“Because he’s throwing books at you.” Finn stands, BB-8 rocking out to stay close to his heels. He throws up his hands, turns away. “Okay, sure. I guess that’s reasonable.”

“Finn.”

He’s angry, of course he is. The sarcasm cuts deeper than it should. Rey reaches out, aborting the movement before Finn can see her pull away. BB-8 bumps up against her knee instead. “I-”

“We – I’m worried about you.” Finn turns back, crossing his arms and scowling at BB-8. “We’ve been rebuilding the Resistance for _months_ now and everywhere we go, people look at u – you like you have all the answers they need. I haven’t seen you take a break in months, you’re spending all your time trying to save the Resistance and…”

She should be taken aback by the outburst, by the way Finn sets his jaw and narrows his eyes. Rey just shrugs. “Finn, I spent _years_ waiting for someone to come back for me on Jakku. These people we’re rescuing have spent longer than that under the First Order.”

Finn sighs, rubs the palm of one hand against his scalp. “I know, Rey. I just wish-”

It hurts to smile, but she manages. The words hurt more. “So do I, Finn.”

* * *

“Sometimes,” Rey says quietly, muffled under the life teeming within their ship. They’ve completed two raids now, their ships so small that they don’t show up on the First Order’s scans, and she’ll never get tired of seeing the smiles that meet the Resistance stepping off of the ships. “When I dream – it’s not me. It’s Ben. You, sometimes. Or other Jedi, I don’t know their names.”

“The Force is within all of us, and it moves-”

“Luke.” Rey opens her eyes, the cacophony of noise receding as she does. Poe is asleep in the chair beside her, head tipped forward to rest on the console and face shielded from the light by an arm. Rey buries her own face in her hands, wincing. “Not today.”

He hums, perching on the edge of the controls between her and Poe. Today he’s wearing long robes that flap around his ankles when he moves. Her lips twitch, catching sight of rough hemlines and more than a few patches sewn into place. Luke glances down, then winces at her.

“I didn’t have much of a social life until the Rebellion,” he says, easily. “If you ask Leia, I was never properly domesticated.”

Rey sneaks a glance at Poe – still asleep – then drops her feet up on the console, careful to avoid kicking anything important. “You didn’t grow up together?”

“Moisture farm in Tatooine. Leia still calls me farmboy, and that’s just the nicest of it.” He catches her frown. “Han used to call her _Your Worshipfullness._ We kept each other honest enough.”

When Rey closes her eyes, she can feel a faint sigh, the soft song of wind through sand. It’s almost Jakku, but not quite – a different melody, the faint cry of something draconian in the distance instead of the merchant’s yells, a sharper hint of salt in the sand that she breathes in.

“Stop that,” Luke says crossly.

Rey’s eyes snap open and the whisper vanishes, leaving only the faint tang of salt behind. She runs her tongue over her teeth until the taste is gone.

Luke edges closer, squinting at her face. Rey wonders if he knows how uncomfortable it makes her, if he knows that she can feel each small movement as keenly as she hears his voice. He probably does, Rey decides. His eyes narrow and then he cuts a hand through the air.

There’s the distinct impression of a door being slammed shut, and he sits back against the console once again, looking satisfied with himself. Rey frowns, trying to memorize the feeling so she can try to replicate it later.

“The dreams,” she repeats.

Luke waves a hand loftily, the gesture not nearly as sharp as before. “You know, when I asked questions, Yoda liked to hit me with a cane.”

“Yoda actually taught you something,” Rey points out. “You just told me that being a Jedi meant failing at everything worthwhile.”

“You’re paraphrasing. I didn’t think you were actually listening, was that before or after you started chasing me with your stick?”

It’s easy enough to reach out with the Force and sends a wrench flying at him. He laugh, holding out a hand and stopping it just in front of his palm.

“I didn’t think you were going to teach me anything,” Rey snaps.

Luke shrugs. “Am I? A real Jedi Master would have sent you to Ilum by now.”

* * *

The journey back to their fledging base takes far too long and Rey bounces impatiently from one foot to another, ignoring the sideways glances Poe gives her during the atmospheric reentry. Rey corners Leia before anyone else has the chance to, ushering her into one of the many rooms that haven’t been designated a purpose yet.

“Rey?” Leia says, concerned.

“Your brother,” Rey bursts out before she can honestly think it through, “is _infuriating._ ”

Leia laughs, a smile tugging at her face. “I loved my brother, often in spite of him.”

Rey paces – she hadn’t bothered to properly tie her staff in place, so it knocks against her heel with each step. Leia just shakes her head. “I’ve had four Resistance members tell me you’re convinced you’ve been talking to Luke.”

She stops in front of Leia, opening her mouth. It hadn’t occurred to her that Leia may have been in contact with the crew members – might not even believe her, when it came to that. The General looks concerned, but not particularly worried.

“I have.” Rey says, firmly. She’ll convince her if she has to. “He said that he grew up on a moisture farm and Yoda used to hit him with a cane and you called him a farmboy.” Leia opens her mouth, but Rey rolls on. “He said that Han used to call you _Your Worshipfulness_ and I don’t even know what Ilum is but-”

Leia’s still smiling. Rey stops midsentence, partly because she’s out of words and partly because Leia’s still smiling. “Ilum is where the Jedi retrieve crystals for their lightsabers.”

Rey crosses her arms and almost jumps out of her skin when Leia lays a hand on her elbow. “Rey,” she says. “I chose not to train as a Jedi, but I am not completely blind to the Force. If you believe that _you_ should go to Ilum – and not because Luke says as much - then the Resistance will go on while you are gone.”

Rey smiles so widely it’s a miracle her cheeks don’t hurt from the force of it. Leia glances behind her, briefly, and squeezes her elbow.

“I – I can go?”

“Take Dameron with you,” Leia says. “You’ll want a spare pilot, but _yes._ Go, Rey.”

* * *

They take the _Falcon_ , of course. There are less-distinguishable ships in the galaxy and far more dependable ones, but when Poe asks which ship Leia’s assigned them, Rey doesn’t think twice. The _Falcon_ is a familiar friend, one that speaks to Rey with every creak and rattle.

“You’re the only one that hasn’t asked me about Luke,” Rey says thoughtfully, when they’re almost to Ilum. For all that it’s just the two of them – and BB-8 – aboard, the ship really isn’t that large. More often than not, when the ships clocks hit an hour that passed for _late_ in the timelessness of space, Poe and Rey had ended up in the same space. He’s likely heard more than one exasperated comment spoken over one of the old Jedi tomes.

Poe frowns. “Was I supposed to?”

Rey huffs a laugh, pushing her food around in her bowl. “Everyone else seemed to think so.”

His amusement is so quick she almost misses it, one of those quick smiles that has a hint of _I know something you don’t_. “Rey, I don’t pretend to understand the Jedi but if I learned one thing from growing up under a Force-sensitive tree, it’s that the Force doesn’t exactly treat everyone the same. If you wanted to talk about it, you would.”

She takes another bite from her rations, considering. She’s not entirely sure that he’s right – or rather, that he _should_ be right. Hadn’t the Jedi fallen because they were so mired in secrecy?

On the other hand, she thinks of Luke. Not the Luke driven to solitude by his own legend, but the younger one that had been almost too quick to smile. Perhaps not everything of the Force was meant to be spoken of. Maybe this was something best left to experience.

Still-

“A Force-sensitive tree?” she can’t quite keep the incredulity from her voice.

“You talk to Force ghosts,” Poe points out quite reasonably. And, well. He isn’t wrong.

* * *

“Skywalker,” she murmurs. “ _Luke._ ”

She’d been so, so certain that she was doing the right thing when she left but – Rey can’t shake the doubt, the absolutely certainty that something will go horribly wrong in her absence.

Luke doesn’t answer, but the Millennium Falcon shifts around her. It’s her turn at the controls – not that there is much happening with another week left in their flight – and Poe is asleep somewhere within the ship. BB-8 is running repairs on the recycling systems, which means she’s been left at rather loose ends.

“ _Luke_ ,” she hisses, and reaches out in the Force. Rey remembers trailing her fingers through the oceans around Ahch-To, feeling that brief resistance before she broke through the layer dividing air and water. She can feel it now, that same tension pushing back against her hand. The same knowledge that Luke should be standing behind her and he isn’t.

Something stirs, almost sleepy. Not Poe, for all that he’s a faint shadow in the Force.

Rey catches her breath. The stars around them – endless, infinite, impossibly small – beckon to her. Each of them croon their own melody of life – thousands and millions of different species coexisting in circles of dusk and dawn. It’s the same feeling as Ahch-To but smaller and _larger_ at the same time, the vastness of the galaxy making infinitesimal patterns send out whispering echos.

And she can see herself – a ripple, of sorts, in the Force. A small stone hurtling through the vastness of space and sending small waves in her wake.

Beyond that – something calls to her. A distant murmur, but one turning in her direction. Rey trails towards it, giddy and curious in the Force.

_Rey?_

Rey almost falls out of her chair, clamoring to her feet. Both hands slam down on the center of the control console, her eyes snapping open.

Kylo Ren’s presence disappears as abruptly as her connection with the Force.

Slowly, Rey sinks back into her seat. “Luke?” she says, but she doesn’t bother to connect with the Force again. Luke isn’t coming, that much is clear.

* * *

“I’ll keep her warm for you,” Poe says, almost mournfully, as Rey opens the hull and they’re hit with a blast of icy rain. “Did you find a map?”

 _You’ll know where you need to go_ , Leia had said before they left – or perhaps it was Luke. Rey doesn’t quite remember which, and she swallows. “I won’t need one.”

Poe looks about as confident about her chances as she feels, but he pats her on the shoulder. Rey crouches down beside him, rests a hand on the top of BB-8’s head. “I won’t be long,” she says. “Don’t let him eat all of the soup, okay?”

BB-8 whistles, a decrescendo of notes that trails off. Rey pats BB-8 again. “Trust in the Force, isn’t that what they say?”

“If it’s with anyone, it’s with you,” Poe says. “But uh – Force be with you, right?”

She chances a quick smile at him. Her fingers are already feeling cold through the gloves, and she’s worried if she stays for any longer, she won’t leave. “Always,” she assures him, and hops into the snow below.

It doesn’t take long for the _Millennium Falcon_ to vanish in the sheets of ice behind her. Rey stops for a moment, tries to feel the swirling chasm of the Force that Luke keeps saying is always within her, and scowls.

She’ll just pick a direction, then, and hope for the best.

* * *

“Why do you need a lightsaber?” Luke asks. Although Rey’s feet crunch in the ice and she sinks down with every step, he moves lightly across the surface. He’s dressed in desert wear more appropriate for Jakku than Ilum and although Rey hadn’t thought it possible, she feels colder just looking at him.

“To be a Jedi,” she says, instantly. The words don’t sound right in her mouth, however, and she frowns. Maybe Luke sees the frown, because he doesn’t say anything at all. Rey pauses, and begins slowly. “No. It’s not the lightsaber that makes the Jedi, is it? But - you asked me who I was when I came to you. I think that’s the answer I’ve been looking for.”

“The Force certainly wasn’t going to explain it to me.” For someone who’s currently transcending death, Luke certainly sounds rather sour.

“You cut yourself off from the Force,” Rey feels obligated to point out, and then she stops. Luke smiles. Rey turns to him, blinking. “…and so did I.”

“Did you now?” Luke folds his hands beneath the robes, looking rather smug. Rey sits down in the snow with a plop. It won’t be long before the damp starts to seep through her layers, but for now, she’s comfortable enough. Luke lowers himself down in front of her, crosslegged. Instinctively, she mirrors his pose, watching her breath frost the air in front of her.

“Not on purpose,” Rey responds, absentmindedly. She’s reaching – reaching back into the Force. This time, she ignores the question in Kylo’s presence. It’s not the life or death or the galaxy itself that careens around her she’s concerned with.

 _Breathe_ , Luke had said or maybe he says it now. Ice stings against the exposed bit of skin around her eyes, numbs her lips and flakes on her eyelashes. It catches along her gloves, lines her back where the wind hits the strongest. It frosts her backpack, covering the zippers and straps.

And Rey - she is the wind, the fleeting clouds in the sky, the thick snow crushed underfoot. Nothing, and everything. The Force moves in the space between them, between the flickers of her awareness. Rey  _feels_ it; the catching spark, a breathing wind, a presence in the palm of her hand.

Rey blinks. Luke doesn’t open his eyes, but he’s still smiling.

“Your third lesson,” he says, smug. “You’ve had everything you’ve needed all along.”

She opens her hand. Rey isn’t sure when she’d tugged off her glove, when she’d reached into the pack but –

Slowly, Rey traces her thumb over the edges of the kyber crystals she’d pulled from Anakin’s shattered lightsaber. Another flake of ice falls, landing in one of the cracks she and Kylo had left behind.

“So, Rey,” Luke says. “Why do you need a lightsaber?”

“Hope,” she whispers. Not for herself – but for the Resistance. For everyone who had watched Luke Skywalker hold back an entire army through the force of his will alone.

Rey turns over the two crystals in her hand, cold snapping at her fingers. The Force is easier to reach here and she gets the sense that, like Luke – like Leia, like Poe, like even Kylo Ren – it’s waiting for her. _Not a tool,_ she knows but not exactly sentient either, for all that she recognizes the nudge against her hand, the sparks dancing along the edges of the crystals.

“I can feel it now,” she says, raising both stones to eye level. She had thought them dead but – _dormant_ would have been a better term. She can feel it now, as though the call of Ilum has started to stir them once more. It would make Finn laugh to hear that she thought two rocks have been waiting to go home. Rey tightly closes her hand around them once more and meets Luke’s gaze.

“Thank you, Luke,” she says. Her knees ache when she rises, stiff with cold. He bows his head to her, although he doesn’t stand to follow. “I won’t be seeing you again, will I?”

Luke closes his eyes. He looks tired, she realizes. Not in the way he had at the island – defeated and purposeless – but… ready to rest and not quite sure he’s allowed to. “The Force will decide,” he says, and then opens his eyes to wink at her. For all that he looks mischievous, there’s an air of wistfulness in the too-deliberately straight line of his shoulders. “But you haven’t really needed me, have you?”

She’ll be angry at him later, Rey thinks. Angry when she’s shaken the snow off of her coat and washed the ice gathering in her hair away. Now, however, she just smiles, digs the edge of her staff into the snow in front of her and makes sure she’ll keep her balance when she steps forward.

“No,” Rey agrees. She doesn’t intend to say anything else, doesn’t think they have anything left to be said, except - “May the Force be with you, Luke Skywalker.”

She can see tension ease away, can see how the snow shifts ever so slightly with him as he moves. “Force be with you, Rey,” he says, and with that, she walks past him towards where she thinks she can see the sun just starting to peek through the clouds.

* * *

When she returns to the Falcon, Poe delivers on his promise – wonderfully warm, dry air meets her at the threshold. BB-8 scolds her for staying out so long, the little droid almost tripping her up as she stumbles into the cabin, but reassures her that _yes, Poe did save some soup!_

Poe just raises an eyebrow at her, watching her shake snow and ice across the floor. Rey pushes back her hood, a trail of shed outerwear littering the ground.

“Did you find anything?” he asks, handing over a mug of hot cocoa. Rey peels her gloves off, almost too cold to properly wrap her fingers around the ceramic. In answer, she fumbles into the top of her boot and tosses the two kyber crystal halves his way.

Poe catches them, turns them over in his hand. Rey knows what he will see: cracks glazed over, new paths in the surface traced by the melting snow and the warm of her own hands. He makes a vague _hm_ of thought and then drops them into one of the many chipped bowls on the ship.

“It’s no Force tree,” she says, “But I think these will do.”

Poe grins and maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s the snow she’s still shaking loose from her hair – or maybe it’s that same spark, the one that just lights up the Resistance when she watches, but his smile is almost as warm as the Force’s whispers around her. “You’re the Jedi,” he agrees, easy as ever and pushing a bowl of soup across the table towards her. “I suppose you would know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed!
> 
> ... or if you just want to call me out on the Taylor Swift title. That's okay too.


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